Veterans Day was originally declared Armistice Day by Woodrow Wilson in 1919 to commemorate the end of World War I on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. In 1954 legislation declared Nov. 11 as Veterans Day to honor veterans who served in the armed forces either during war or during peace.
Having a Vietnam veteran for a father and a patriotic mother, I was inundated into the American ethos of Veterans Day and my father in particular would attempt to explain what the consequences of being a veteran actually were. Being a child and then later a young man I chose to ignore his teachings and enlisted in the Marine Corps in search of adventure and travel.
It seems I should have listened to my father and not the media and governmental ideas of the pleasures of being a veteran.
Recently I began to read through Howard Zinn's "On War," a collection of essays in which Zinn urges the reader to ask questions and renounce war and the consequences of war. One article, in particular, struck a note with me. Veterans Day, partially reprinted with permission from Seven Stories Press (Copyright -¬ 2001 by Howard Zinn):
"The irreducible core of all war is the slaughter of the innocent, organized by national leaders, accompanied by lies ... [N]ational leaders have worked hard to smother what they called 'the Vietnam syndrome,' to forget that we learned at the war's end: that our leaders cannot be trusted, that modern war is inevitably a war against civilians and particularly children, that only a determined citizenry can stop the government when it embarks on mass murder.
Our decent impulse, to recognize the ordeal of our veterans, has been used to obscure the fact that they died, they were crippled, for no good cause other than the power of profit of a few...[H]ave turned a day the celebrated the end of a horror, into a day to honor militarism.
"As a combat veteran myself ... I do not want the recognition of my service to be used as a glorification of war. At the end of the [World War II], in which fifty million died, the people of the world should have shouted 'Enough!' ... The reason for such a decision is that war in our time - whatever "humanitarian" motives are claimed by our political leaders - is always a war against children: the child amputees created by our bombing of Yugoslavia, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children dead as a result of our post-war sanctions.
Veterans Day should be an occasion for a national vow: no more war victims on the other side; no more war veterans on our side."
As a veteran who did tours of duty in both Afghanistan and Iraq and returned to the United States to a feeling of having received half truths - especially concerning the situation in Iraq - I say enough.
Enough dead and disabled service men and their suffering families. Enough dead Iraqi and Afghani civilians, destroyed cultures, demolished neighborhoods and fragmented families. Enough half-truths about the justification of the beginning, continuation, conduct, and procrastination of ending the war in Iraq. Enough tax dollars being diverted to corrupt corporations doing a substandard job "serving" the troops fighting the war when we have men, women and children starving all over the world, including on our own streets.
Enough telephone calls on a Tuesday afternoon telling me that two Marines I helped train had died in this unjustified war. Enough war veterans coming back to the United States and having an unshakable fear of crowded streets, wide open spaces, dark houses, and nervousness at not being armed all the time.
But it is not just the responsibility of veterans to proclaim, "Enough."
It is all of our responsibilities to question. our leaders and not demand "Enough?" but demand "Enough!"
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